Sweeping Zen » David Zunigahttp://sweepingzen.com
The Who's Who of Zen BuddhismThu, 19 Feb 2015 15:23:18 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1David Zuniga Interviewhttp://sweepingzen.com/david-zuniga-interview/
http://sweepingzen.com/david-zuniga-interview/#commentsTue, 18 Jan 2011 12:58:07 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=20942January 18, 2011 David Zuniga (Dae-il Sunim) is the first Westerner to be ordained as a priest in the Taego Order, the oldest lineage of Son (Korean Zen) Buddhism. He was ordained at Sonamsa Temple of Chogye Mountain, located in the South Cholla province in Sunchun. Sonamsa temple was built in 529 C.E. and is ...

David Zuniga (Dae-il Sunim) is the first Westerner to be ordained as a priest in the Taego Order, the oldest lineage of Son (Korean Zen) Buddhism. He was ordained at Sonamsa Temple of Chogye Mountain, located in the South Cholla province in Sunchun. Sonamsa temple was built in 529 C.E. and is the main temple of the Taego lineage. When he was ordained, he was given the monastic name Dae-il Sunim. Dae-il in Korean means Vairochana Buddha (Sanskrit “He Who is Like the Sun”) and Sunim is the Korean word for “Bikkshu” or “ordained monk.” His has completed two practice periods in South Korea.

SZ: David, maybe you could tell us a bit about how you came to Zen practice. Thanks.

DZ: You know, I actually have been interested in Zen since childhood. I was born in the South (in Virginia) and had a pretty conservative, traditional upbringing. My dad was a career Navy man – he was in the Navy for 20 years – so I sort of grew up around military bases all of my life, at least until I reached adulthood. I was also raised in Catholic schools throughout my upbringing – Catholic grade school, Catholic middle school and a Catholic high school.

I think my initial attraction to Zen was twofold. For one, since my father was a Navy man he would travel the world and write me letters almost every day when he was gone. That helped me get interested in a lot of multicultural perspectives – philosophy, religion and culture in general. The other thing was that, as a kid, starting at about age 10 years old, I got involved with traditional tae kwon do (which is a Korean martial art). Many of my instructors were native Korean and Buddhist and, while it wasn’t explicitly a religious exercise, we would meditate in class, we would bow to the Korean flag, and a lot of times we were discussing what I would term Buddhist-esque ideas. Actually, we did that a lot of the time in class. So that was kind of the genesis of it actually.

SZ: Now, you’re an ordained monk in the Taego order of Korean Buddhism. This order, until recently, has remained relatively obscure in the West. For starters, what made you choose this particular order?

DZ: It is pretty obscure in the West but slowly more and more people are learning about it. My first trip to Korea was during the summer of 2001 and I later did my novice ordination in 2005. I did my full ordination as a monk in 2008 – so I’ve only been ordained since about 2005, which isn’t very long ago really. I was the first Westerner ordained in the Taego lineage. So, it’s definitely a bit obscure when measured according to Western standards (laughter).

It’s a good question, Adam. I think it was just a matter of good fortune. I had done my Masters in English and met my wife… actually, let’s stop there for a moment, because it’s an important point. Many forms of Buddhism practiced around the world are a bit like Roman Catholicism, the religion of my childhood. In other words, the practitioner must be celibate to be fully ordained and, to my knowledge, the only exceptions to that are the Japanese traditions and my particular lineage of Korean Zen.

So, as I was saying, I had a partner as I went off to Harvard Divinity school in Massachusetts and a good friend of mine Ilmee Sunim – who was an ordained Korean monk – came over from Korea to Harvard completing his Masters at the time. He and I became very good friends. I also got to be really good friends with his wife, who is also an author and Buddhist –Sumi Loundon Kim. These two both were instrumental in my having taken my first trip to Korea and then I started working as a chaplain while in Harvard Divinity school. I graduated from Harvard in 2002, moved to Texas (which is where my wife is from), and just always stayed in touch with my friend Ilmee Sunim. One day in 2003 we were on the phone and he said to me, “Dave, for your work as a full-time hospital Buddhist chaplain, you’re working kind of like a Buddhist monk anyway. You’re already doing ministry work but are not ordained – have you ever thought about being ordained?”

I had always kind of dreamed about becoming ordained. And, you know, in the West – even in Harvard – Buddhism is not necessarily accessible for all Westerners, in a sense. So becoming ordained would be like a dream come true. Ilmee and Sumi were both really very instrumental in that process for me. So, that is kind of how it came about in a nutshell.

SZ: Now you mentioned celibacy, which seems to always be the item of contrast between the Taego order and the more dominant Chogye order in Korea. The Taego order has even been referred to sometimes as the married monks order, perhaps even as a derogatory term. Jongmae Park in his interview here at Sweeping Zen went out of his way to point out that this simply isn’t true – it is a stereotype. Some of the monks in the Taego order actually are celibate and some are not. I think he wanted to make the point that it was a somewhat unfair characterization of the order.

DZ: Yeah – but it is somewhat accurate I think, as well. But it’s true, not everybody in the Taego lineage is married. But, at least in my mind, it is probably the biggest difference. Beyond that, and this is just my own personal opinion, I don’t think that there are many differences beyond that.

SZ: OK. Now, would you say that Korean Buddhism is Zen Buddhism? Because sometimes people will say that it is not, a bit like they might say Vietnamese Buddhism is not Zen, either. Mind you, I am not using Zen in this context to specify anything Japanese. I was just curious if you would place then the Taego order under the Zen school?

DZ: Good question. It depends very much on how you define Zen. I do think that sometimes in the West, when we think of Buddhism in the West, we tend to think of Tibetan Buddhism and, when we think of Zen in the West, we tend to think of Japanese Zen Buddhism. Now, Japanese Zen is really, really great, but it is just one kind of Zen. So, I would classify Chogye and Taego as Zen Buddhism – I think it may have a little bit of a different flavor than all the other different varieties but yes, I would definitely say that it is Zen Buddhism.

SZ: OK.

DZ: And sometimes in Korea even people will not call it Son Buddhism (which is the Korean term for Zen) – they will call it Korean Buddhism. I think that part of that is because Koreans are very proud of their culture. They want to claim a unique formulation of the Dharma.

SZ: Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Now, is there a kong-an tradition within the Taego order? Is there really an official kong-an tradition within Korean Buddhism in general? I only ask because, for instance, the kong-an tradition which was developed by Zen master Seung Sahn is very, very unique. There is one Zen teacher I know who, after many years practicing with the Kwan Um School of Zen, went to do some training with a teacher with a background in Japanese traditions. When it came time for his koan interview, which was Joshu’s Mu, this teacher with the Japanese background looked at him as though he were insane. In the Kwan Um School of Zen the answer he gave was more than acceptable but, apparently in this context, you completely missed the mark. Perhaps that just means we’re relying too heavily once again on the Japanese approach to Zen…

DZ: That’s a really good question. Seung Sahn sunim was one of the few (in my opinion) Zen masters of Korea to become somewhat well known in the West. I had a really great opportunity when I was in Korea in 2001 – I actually got to practice at the Seoul International Zen Center, which was the main temple where he often lived. I can only say that when I was there we did kong-an practice. Now I don’t know what his particular teaching on koans was, I’m not really qualified to say. My personal experience of having been at his temple was that kong-an practice was a big thing.

I do know that they had a pretty – and this is just kind of what I’ve read – that when Seung Sahn sunim started teaching in the West there were quite a few controversies. He was quite a rebel, allowing ordained and lay people to sit together or men and women sit together. He would let people who were meditating sit on chairs, not just Christians. None of this seems like a big deal now but, compared to where he came from, these were very progressive ideas. He had quite a few temples in Korea and Seoul International Zen Center at least was one which catered mostly to Westerners. There were not a lot of people from Korea there – at least that is what I was told.

SZ: So do you think that he was more well known here than he was in Korea or is he very well known in Korea, as well?

DZ: Umm, I think he is pretty well known but – that’s a good question – I think he’s well known but I think that there are a lot of other teachers that are extremely popular in Korea, too. From my experience with the Korean Buddhists in Korea they are well aware of Seung Sahn sunim and largely within the context of his impact in the West. They often look at Westerners as being very interested in Zen itself. Uh, which is true.

SZ: OK. I want to make sure that we discussed what your training was like while in Korea, living in what was essentially a new culture. Could you tell us a bit about it?

DZ: Yeah, I have a very interesting relationship with Korea because I’ve only gone there to train. So, as I said earlier, I was there in the summer of 2001 and then again in 2005 for about seven weeks when I was ordained as a novice – and then I went back in 2008. I’ve never actually lived in Korea. During my actual ordination training in 2005 – I did a lot of preparation back in the states with Ilmee and my soon to be, at the time, Zen master Bop-hyun Sunim – practicing chanting, prostrations, and that kind of stuff. The actual training that I did in Korea was probably different from what a lot of Westerners might think of as Zen. It was a very traditional Korean Zen training regimen. In other words, I did what is called ascetic practice in Korea –all forms of religion have some type of asceticism and I think the Chogye training is similar. Ascetic in the sense that we strip away everything that is not needed – anything which is not essential to the spiritual path. So you’re focusing in on precisely what matters, almost in a laser-like fashion. So, in a nutshell, when I was in Korea I did some pre-training in Seoul and then I went to a temple called Sonamsa. Sonamsa is very, very beautiful. It is kind of the main temple, or one of the main temples, of the Chogye Order, and it was built a little before 400 A.D. – so, it’s a very ancient, gorgeous, sprawling Buddhist complex.

In a nutshell my training consisted of a many-faceted study and then, coupled with study, it was just a raw ascetic practice. There was a lot of sleep deprivation, often going to bed at about 10 or 11 o’clock at night and then we were always up by say 2:30 AM. (Laughter) Sometimes I would go to sleep at 11 o’clock and they would wake me up at 12 o’clock and be like, “David, what is your philosophy on emptiness?” So then we would have a conversation about emptiness for the next hour or so and I would go to sleep and be back up at 2:30 AM again. There were also many physical challenges. For example, we would do a lot of prostrations which I know that you are familiar with but, for those who are unfamiliar, I would describe them as Buddhist push-ups. You go from a full standing posture all the way down to the ground and then come all the way back up. And, at least in Korean Zen, I think in all forms of Buddhism really, there is somewhat of an ascetic dimension to it – you don’t use your hands and you kind of keep your legs together. It’s actually a very, very hard practice – we would have to do I am guessing 1000 or 1500 of these throughout the day. In fact, I’ve been doing sports all of my life and I can pretty much remember the exact day when my lateral meniscus tore and – I don’t know if we discussed this by e-mail, but the meniscus is kind of a tissue that separates your tibia and femur. Anyway, that tissue tore – and I know that because I could feel the tear when I was in Korea and when I got back to the states I got an MRI. So, even though I had a torn lateral meniscus I still had to do my prostrations. So, it was very challenging!

The other thing is that there was a lot of fasting. At the temple it was a strictly vegetarian diet and I would say there was 2 to 3 cups of brown rice a day and, you know, some soggy vegetables (laughs). I’m not complaining but it was very spartan – oh, sometimes there would be a tiny bit of tofu, as well. I’m just guessing but I think that we were all living off of maybe 600 to 700 calories a per day which is very, very challenging on a whole host of levels. Now many times people say to me, “Now David, the Buddha said that salvation lies in the middle way.” And, that is true. At the same time I believe that the Buddha’s sense of a middle way was a bit different than our modern, perhaps somewhat pampered, style of a middle way. I do think the Buddha said also that he would reach enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings or die trying. I really believe Adam that, like working in end-of-life care, when you see the Great Matter of birth and death and you see immense suffering in the world, hopefully your heart will open and you will just want to do everything in your power (like the Buddha) to transform that suffering. So, the idea in Korean Zen isn’t – and not to put a lot of the other religions down – but it’s not like a lot of these religions where you pray and seek miracles from God, that kind of thing. In Buddhism we say that if you discipline yourself, if you come with wisdom and compassion and good intentionality, you can cultivate skillfulness and then becom a very skillful healer for the suffering of the world. So, the ascetic training that I had went through in Korea was certainly trying to give you like a PhD immersion course in transforming suffering (laughter).

SZ: Like Soen Sa Nim used to say, “Any situation is no problem.”

DZ: Yeah, I think that if I heard you correctly, I think both are true. In a sense, suffering, and there is actually a lot of research on this, is not inherent in the event itself it is in the attitude with which we bring to it. I definitely see that, for instance, with chronic illness and terminal illness. Not to make any judgments but you will have two people with the exact same disease in the exact same situation that have radically different attitudes. So, a lot of our attitude, our happiness and skillfulness, those kind of things, do relate to our attitude. And, the truth is also, I think Shunryu Suzuki roshi said this, “The only way to transform your suffering is to allow it to be painful.” There is this thing that sometimes in life things just get hard. It’s just like the First Noble truth says: “Life is suffering.” Sometimes in life we do simply feel overwhelmed and that sense of being overwhelmed can be a catalyst for great advancement.

SZ: Very good. Now if we could just transition a little bit into your chaplaincy work, particularly your work in end-of-life care as you mentioned. I was just curious to know if hospital chaplaincy was something that you always wanted to get into.

DZ: Um, sort of. As a kid, my dad was in the Navy for 20 years, and he would be gone for like a year at a time or sometimes even two years on deployment, coming back for maybe a month during that time – so, in a lot of ways, I was the child of a single parent household and my mom was just kind of this legendary hero in my mind – she’s just great. I remember when I was nine years old that my great-grandmother died and I came downstairs, it was late at night, and my mother was just weeping. I was just a little kid but I thought, “Wow, what could be so powerful that it makes my mom cry?” If you knew her you’d know that you have to be very strong to make my mother cry. It just didn’t happen, at least not from my child’s eye view. So, I guess even as a kid I was always interested in death and suffering – what is it, suffering? How do we transform suffering? Can there ever be an upside to suffering? I was always interested in these kinds of questions and I do think that my life has kind of been in some ways a journey toward that end.

Originally, before going to Harvard, I had gotten a Masters in English. I really, and this might sound sort of cliché, but the reason why I went and got my Masters in English was just because I wanted to study the so-called canon of great literature. Really, I wanted to study a lot of the questions that Buddhism looks at but from a different lens, perhaps a more artistic lens. So, I’ve definitely been interested in these things all of my life. Part of my graduating from Harvard I had to complete at least two internships and I ended up getting a job as a chaplain, so that is kind of how things took off. But, I never as a kid – I say in some ways I was very religious kid and in other ways probably not religious at all. I didn’t envision myself doing this. Most people do not go into ministry anyway and for those who do, even within Buddhism, they tend not to do their work within a hospital setting. They tend instead to work and temples are churches. So anyway, I did not initially anticipate this kind of work but I’m very satisfied in doing it.

SZ: Well Buddhism I have always thought of as being quite morbid, actually. I’ll say that since I’d encountered Buddhism about a decade ago that death is frequently at the forefront of my mind. It always seems to be right there. Do you find that a lot of the people at the end of their lives have a lot of questions about the death experience? Are they looking to you mostly for comfort in the dying process? What generally are individuals who are at the end of their life looking to you for?

DZ: Good question. I started working as a chaplain in 1999 and spent about half of that time in hospitals and about half of that time in hospice. In hospitals I worked with pediatric and adult patients, mostly in end-stage ontology (end-stage cancer). And, of course, hospice is for individuals who have six months or less to live. Most of that time I was either running a palliative care program (which is for patients transitioning into hospice) or working as a straight up interfaith chaplain. I found that patients have a lot of stuff going on. To start, there is first and foremost a lot of this kind of case management stuff – things like financing the funerals, taking care of next of kin, how to fill out advanced directives, treatment decisions, etc. So there are lots of treatment decisions and logistics stuff to deal with…also, funding questions. 100% of my career I have worked in nonprofit healthcare and for the vast majority of that time I have worked with patients who lack proper funds – so there are all kinds of treatment logistics that I help them out with as a social worker. Because, it’s very good to talk about enlightenment and all, very good to talk about rebirth or sitting with koans – all those kind of things. I am not minimizing that stuff – I’m a Zen priest, I love that stuff. But, if you are dying and you do not have someone to take care of your children – let’s say you have metastatic bone cancer – it is very, very hard to sit with that and do koans or start up a chanting practice, that kind of thing. It’s really a hierarchy of needs kind of thing – first you have to get the base stuff taken care of before you can even think of dealing with all of that other stuff. In some ways I think that the spiritual challenges are the hardest challenges but, getting that other stuff done ahead of time makes it a whole lot easier.

Also, to your question, people really do want a lot of kind of hard-core information about what the dying process is like, what they might expect. Part of that I think is because we are such a death averse society that nobody really knows what to expect and, when folks don’t have information, things can become really, really scary. Then, of course, as a chaplain, the biggest thing I do is just sit with people and facilitate spiritual practices or get them the resources that they need if I can’t perform what they need. For example, I am not a Catholic priest. I can’t perform the Catholic sacraments, that kind of thing. So, if someone needs that, I’ll try to get them a Catholic priest. But yes, people definitely have a lot of existential concerns, a lot of spiritual concerns, some of which revolve around a cultural or religious background. But, yeah, I’d say the vast majority of what I do is what we would call pastoral counseling around end-of-life related issues.

SZ: Thank you. I wondered – how are you funded? Who pays for your services? Are their grants and that sort of thing set up?

DZ: It really depends upon the particular job that I’m doing. For example, I currently work for a nonprofit hospice here in Texas and I believe this year approximately 11% of our patients are underfunded, which is a huge amount. Texas sort of has the dubious distinction as having the highest rate of uninsured in the country, by the way.

SZ: Texas has done so many great things for this country.

DZ: (Laughs) Yeah (clears throat). But, there is plenty of suffering to transform. I’ll say that. So, at least in the hospice that I currently work at, spiritual care is considered very important so chaplains are just paid for by the agency because they really value that kind of holistic care, which I think is great. When I ran a palliative care program I worked on a case management team and so we had grants, that sort of thing. But your question is a good one because, for better or for worse, in healthcare (I would generally say for worse) in some ways the bottom line is the economic bottom line. Treatment decisions get made, lots of things happen because of funding or a lack of funding. In general chaplaincy is not seen as a revenue-generating profession so those are real concerns for anyone out there interested in going into the field.

SZ: Now, would you describe yourself as chaplain first and Buddhist chaplain second? I ask because you mentioned, for example, directing people to a Catholic priest when they need – that sort of thing. Moreover, I’d imagine that there probably is not a huge demographic of Buddhist practitioners in a Texas hospital or hospice setting – so, for instance, if someone is a Christian we sit there and do a Christian prayer with them. That kind of thing? I’d imagine you are not doing exclusively Buddhist services, as it were.

DZ: It depends. A lot of times I will go in to the hospital with my moktak, which is a Korean Zen drum, and will chant in Korean and Pali. But, like you said, we are living in Texas, which is kind of the buckle of the Bible Belt, so… and my last name is Zuniga, which is Spanish. You know, in Texas, everyone is at least a little bit bilingual and so people will see my last name and they’ll think I am Mexican, which I am, and immediately assume that I’m Catholic. Or, at least, Christian. They will also see my skin color, which is fairly light, and I am in Texas and I have this job as a chaplain, so they will assume, understandably, that I’m a Christian. After all, most people in Texas are Christian. Also, the job of an interfaith chaplain is an interesting one. The thing I like about it is that you are not there to proselytize – and that is a key point. You are not there to proselytize. It is kind of like the doctrine of upaya, you are there to help people in the way that they want to be helped. I find that coming out with that perspective is quite liberating. So, in a sense, I would say that I’m definitely a Buddhist chaplain because, you know, I meditate, I chant – it is where I draw my religious sustenance from. It is how I view and interact with the world and is the thing that makes sense to me. At the same time, most of the people that I work with are not Buddhist by any stretch of the imagination. If you’re going to go into hospital chaplaincy, unless you’re going to work in a specifically Buddhist hospice, of which there are few around the country, most of the people that you are going to find yourself working with are Christian. So, you just have to know that going in. To be an interfaith chaplain is in many ways analogous to being bilingual, even trilingual – you have to be very, very skillful at relating to people who might be really conservative Christian, super liberal Christian, Muslim, Hindu, members of the Native American religions, those interested in Jewish spirituality, etc. Sometimes people will say, “Oh, you’re Buddhist. What’s that all about? Do Buddhists believe in God?” You have to be very, very good at conveying complicated foreign ideas in ways which people can actually digest very, very quickly.

SZ: It sounds very much like you are there to provide them mostly with comfort. As you said, you’re not there to proselytize. You are not there to necessarily teach them anything. People are at the end of their life and, while spirituality is probably at the forefront of most of their minds, it isn’t exactly the time to introduce new religious ideas, etc. I think it is definitely a practice of meeting people where they are and I very much applaud the work you are doing.

DZ: Absolutely. I always have to remind myself that 99% of those people that I’m working with have zero interest in me. They don’t need to know any details about me or any autobiographical background, some of which is just boundaries and self-disclosure kind of stuff. You’re definitely not there to talk about yourself, that kind of thing. Very, very rarely does my “self” enter into the conversation. Sometimes it does, but it is rare.

SZ: Now, let’s say that there is somebody out there reading this right now who is thinking about becoming a Buddhist chaplain. How might they go about getting started with that?

DZ: Great question. The best way would be to go to the Association of Professional Chaplains website – they are called the APC for short. If people Google that the site will pop right up. There are two main organizations which license chaplains – there is the National Association of Catholic Chaplains and, for the rest of us who are not Catholic (that would include us Buddhists), they would go through the Association of Professional Chaplains. In a nutshell, and I got my license a long time ago, but I’m confident the requirements are still the same, the guidelines are actually very stringent. I think that is because in part chaplaincy in healthcare is based around a hard medical model (a biological and empirically driven model). So, things like spirituality or chaplaincy kind of get viewed with suspicion and in general, this is not always true, but in general it is hard to generate revenue. It is possible to show a monetary value present in chaplaincy work but it is rather hard to quantify – so I think that one thing the APC does, and it’s good, is they really emphasize professional skills and are uninterested in people who have no training or are there to proselytize, people who are psychologically or spiritually unhealthy, that kind of thing.

In general you need a Masters in Divinity or some allied field and, at a minimum, at least to be fully certified, two years of full-time employment (during your practicum) before you can get your license. You also have to do an interview which is rather rigorous, write a ton of essays which are often autobiographical – it’s actually a multi-year, rather big process. The other thing is that you, well you don’t necessarily have to be ordained, but being ordained helps – and that is kind of a tricky thing for most Buddhists because, as we were talking about, in most forms of Buddhism you have to be celibate to be ordained. Now, you do not have to necessarily be ordained, but it does help. You also have to have what is called being commissioned, which I think is a little bit of a Christian term. You have to have a Zen temple, a Sangha, some religious group that says you are trained as an interfaith chaplain, as a Buddhist working in an interfaith setting, and that we give you ongoing education – someone who you are ultimately accountable to. So you have to have that kind of Sangha support behind you.

So, those are pretty much the general steps and you can, again, get all the information you need from the Association of Professional Chaplains website. But it’s interesting because I think if you read Tricycle or Shambhala Sun, it is viewed as sort of an up and coming field and it is certainly Buddhist – as the Buddha said, “I teach one thing and one thing only – suffering and the cessation of suffering.” Buddhism is all about transforming suffering.” So, in a lot of ways, Buddhism is incredibly skillful in various chronic illness/end-of-life situations. It also, in some ways, presents unique challenges. Buddhism is a non-theistic religion which does not focus on a belief in God (unlike most of the other world religions). You can be an atheist or agnostic and be a Buddhist, unlike most of the other religions. So, it’s a great career for a Buddhist to think about and there are some interesting dimensions to it for those looking at it to ponder.

SZ: Very insightful. Thank you David. I wanted to go back to the Taego order of Korean Buddhism if we could because I’m sure there are people out there who know absolutely nothing about it. Perhaps you just briefly tell us a little more about the Taego order, specifically. Your historical ancestor was a Korean master by the name of Taego, that right?

DZ: Yes, he was. Um, I think the things that differentiate – Korean Buddhism, Korean Zen – from other forms of Buddhism, other forms of Zen, the most popular form of Zen in the West is Japanese Zen (which sort of transverses a path of either koan practice or “just sitting”) – in Korean Buddhism there’s never been that sort of unhappy divide. You have both of those forms of practice in Korean Buddhism so that is one difference. Korean Buddhism in general does focus much more on koan style practice. Korean Buddhism is interesting because, as Robert Buswell said, Korean Buddhism is kind of a product of the currents and crosscurrents between China and Japan. That’s really true – a lot of people think that, you know, Zen just kind of sprung up in Japan, or maybe it went from India to China and somehow hopped over to Japan, which just is not the case. Buddhism came from India to China and then on down the Korean Peninsula and into Japan. People who are studying Buddhism in Japan would go up the Korean Peninsula on in to China and back and forth, so Korean Zen has this sort of rich interchange between Chinese Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism. Also, if you go to Korean temples, you will sometimes see statues of Confucius or other Confucian teachers because Confucianism is a very big part of Korean Buddhism.

In the Taego order it is often said that, I don’t know if this is empirically true but it is often said in the Taego and Chogye in general, that Chogye tends to emphasize meditation more and that the Taego order emphasizes chanting more. I honestly don’t know if that is actually true but it is something that I’ve been told. So, anyway, those are a couple things to elaborate a bit more on Korean Buddhism and, more specifically, the Taego order.

SZ: You know, going back to something you said on how Zen made its way down the Korean Peninsula first from China on into Japan, I just wanted to say how I always felt that Korean architecture and painting styles have a lot of similarities with Tibetan architecture and painting (particularly color choices).

DZ: Yeah, it does to me also. Images and iconography are definitely not my specialty but my heart reaction in Korean temples has been that I think they look very Tibetan. That’s my personal observation – like, just the artwork…

SZ: And color choices…

DZ: Yeah I think it looks very Tibetan. Yeah, absolutely.

SZ: OK, now one of my last questions has to do with the future of the Taego order in North America. I have noticed that you and many of the disciples who were ordained under Ven. Jongmae Park are not recognized by an organization such as The American Zen Teachers Association, as an example. I just wondered if you thought that is sort of a symptom of what we’ve been talking about – how in the West we’ve come to equate Zen Buddhism with Japanese Zen Buddhism. That is to say, the entire approach to traditional teaching authorization within the Korean Zen traditions is different than most of these Japanese orders or even the Kwan Um School of Zen started by Zen master Seung Sahn, who we’ve talked about. Is this something that you and others within the Taego order here in North America have thought about at all. I mean, the Korean Zen tradition is very much a “monk tradition.”

DZ: You know that’s a great question and I don’t know actually. I mean my hunch is that – as you know, I was the first Westerner ordained in the Taego lineage – um, and that was just five years ago… so, and I’m just guessing, but I think that there are 20 or so monks who’ve been ordained since then in the US by Jongmae Park, who you interviewed. He would actually know better than I. I believe I’m the only Westerner who is not his disciple. Like, he is definitely above me in the hierarchy. Um, my hunch is that I think – I mean, I’d love to get involved with the American Zen teachers Association and those kind of groups. I guess I’ve just been so immersed in my chaplaincy work (the truth is, there are very few Buddhists doing this work professionally). I don’t know, but when I first started doing my chaplaincy work – which was about, oh I don’t know, 11 years ago or so about, I was the third Buddhist to get licensed as an interfaith chaplain.

SZ: Was that within the particular state you are in?

DZ: No, that was third in the entire country. It’s interesting, there are actually more Muslim and Hindu chaplains than Buddhists. I do believe there are a lot more now – I think you can go to the APC website and you can see there are a few more. But, there are not many. I mean, my guess is that there may be 10 to 20 of us. There are definitely Buddhists in a hospital setting doing volunteer work – that is certainly true. There are Buddhists who are training at various Zen hospices in the country doing great work. But, there’s just not a lot of day-to-day, you know, full-time 9 to 5 professional chaplains who are Buddhist. I hope to see many more. It’s a great way to practice the Dharma – nothing teaches you about emptiness like sitting with a little child who is being taken off of a ventilator. It is truly the great practice of birth and death and I think that Buddhists can be great at it. Buddhists have a lot – I know they do – to add to the dialogue. And I guess I’m going to actually look into that a little more myself Adam – the American Zen Teachers Association. Frankly, it would be good I think for the Taego lineage to get involved. I think that the Taego lineage has been very conservative in some ways and, you know, the Chogye lineage was ordaining people back in the 1970s, so… I mean, it took the Taego order more than 30 years to do that. So, I think because we are small in the West and because I think we have been conservative (which is neither good nor bad) that it’s been for those reasons that we’ve probably not gotten involved. And, I know for myself, I am pretty busy with end-of-life work and working as a therapist. But yeah, good question.

SZ: David, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for sitting down to talk with me today. As people are starting to recognize perhaps, we always end by asking interviewees for their reading picks. What books might you recommend to someone who is interested in Zen practice or, moreover, the Korean approaches to Zen practice?

DZ: Well, for Buddhist practice in general two of my favorite books are Shunryu Suzuki roshi’sZen Mind, Beginner’s Mind– I think it is a brilliant book, though it is not a Korean Zen book. It’s just amazing and a personal favorite of mine. I’d also recommendMindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It’s simply the best text on how to do Vipassana meditation that I have ever read. I consider it to be a classic. I would recommend it to anyone that is interested in learning more about Buddhism. Concerning Korean Zen there are a lot of great published works out there – particularly the published works of Taego Po. Anyway, those are some of my recommendations. There is also a lot of stuff out there to read on the interplay between Buddhism and psychology – the effects that Buddhism is having on psychology and the effects of psychology is having on Buddhism. Lots of reading out there worth exploring.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/david-zuniga-interview/feed/0Zuniga, Davidhttp://sweepingzen.com/david-zuniga-bio/
http://sweepingzen.com/david-zuniga-bio/#commentsThu, 24 Dec 2009 04:58:37 +0000http://touchpointe.net/sweepingzen/?p=1431David Zuniga (Dae-il Sunim) is the first westerner to be ordained as a priest in the Korean Buddhist Taego Order, the oldest lineage of Sŏn (Korean Zen) Buddhism. He was ordained at Sonamsa Temple of Chogye Mountain, located in the South Cholla province in Sunchun. Sonamsa temple was built in 529 C.E. and is the ...

]]>David Zuniga (Dae-il Sunim) is the first westerner to be ordained as a priest in the Korean Buddhist Taego Order, the oldest lineage of Sŏn (Korean Zen) Buddhism. He was ordained at Sonamsa Temple of Chogye Mountain, located in the South Cholla province in Sunchun. Sonamsa temple was built in 529 C.E. and is the main temple of the Taego lineage. When he was ordained, he was given the monastic name Dae-il Sunim. Dae-il in Korean means Vairochana Buddha (Sanskrit “He Who is Like the Sun”) and Sunim is the Korean word for “Bikkshu” or “ordained monk.” His has completed two practice periods in South Korea.

Professionally, David works as an interfaith hospital chaplain for an interdisciplinary medical case management team for high-risk cancer patients. As the chaplain, he oversees the palliative care program and focuses the majority of his time on end-of-life care. He also does grant writing, and facilitates meditation groups and seminars on stress reduction for patients and healthcare professionals.

David is one of the first Buddhist practitioners to become a Board Certified Chaplain by the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC). Currently, he serves on the APC’s Theological Equivalency Committee for chaplains who are seeking certification. He earned a Master of Divinity Degree from Harvard Divinity School, and also holds a Master of Arts in English Literature. He is the former co-director of the Harvard Buddhist Community, and has published articles on religion and spirituality, in both the United States and South Korea. He serves on the board of the Interfaith Care Alliance, a non-profit organization which trains teams of volunteers to work with terminally ill patients. And he also facilitates classes, seminars, and meditation groups for the general community.

In his personal time David enjoys spending time with his wife, dog, and two cats. He has a black belt in Taekwondo and enjoys ultra marathons (races longer than marathon distance) and playing chess.

Bio in brief

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